To Pip A Bird Analysis

To Pimp A Butterfly is an album by rapper and writer Kendrick Lamar, the album is a comprehensive storytelling of Lamar’s life starting from when he was a teen living in Compton, stretching all the way to how he found fame and the experiences his new lifestyle gave him. The album was awarded a Grammy for Best Rap Album of the Year, and was also awarded the Danish Music Award for International Album of the Year. While the goal of the album is to tell a gritty, realistic “rags-to-riches” tale while also highlighting the dark side of what fame can do to a person, the nature of Kendrick Lamar’s childhood and the demons that haunt him can also be seen as a social commentary on what it’s like to live in poverty and low-class neighborhoods all your

“The Blacker the Berry” also can related to the theories about inadequacy as an African American in a white world. The song brings in many current events and the evil behind the white-washing going on in America. One line goes, “You hate me don’t you? / You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture / You’re fucking evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey” (“The Blacker the Berry”). The song also has lines such as “I’m black as the heart of a fuckin’ Aryan”, and “You hate my people, I can tell cause it threatens when I see you”. This song and many of the themes it expresses can relate to W.E.B DuBois’s theories in The Souls of Black Folk and also in The Philadelphia Negro. The theories behind Double Consciousness can be seen in when Kendrick Lamar raps about his struggle as both an American and having African descent, and coming to realization at 16 that he was different from the other Americans he saw around him, and he asks those white American stop “to pardon my heritage from a small village”. DuBois claims that this is the idea of Double Consciousness, where African Americans don’t feel as though they fit into America and the predominately white culture, and by not fully fitting into either identity as African or American, they can’t identify a sense of self and identity. This song can also fit into the theory of The Negro Problem written about by W.E.B DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro, where during the time of writing the book, African Americans

Kendrick Lamar’s album To Pimp a Butterfly is not only the story behind his own life and experiences, but it’s also a social commentary on the lives of young African American men growing up in poverty, who often end up staying in the community they grew up in throughout their lives. Kendrick Lamar was able to escape this lifestyle and find fame through his talents in rapping and writing, but many of his experiences of growing up stuck with him as he became famous. The album confronts issues of colorism, discrimination through the theory of The Negro Problem as written about by W.E.B Dubois, classism and the struggle of fetishism of commodity, police brutality, and finding representation with those facing the same problems in a community. Although Kendrick Lamar faced many different struggles in his life, he was able to see through the discrimination and what is referred to as “the veil”, and be proud of his complexion, where he grew up, and the fact that although he may be different from many Americans around him, he should embrace his heritage and combat the racism, ignorance, and intolerance that has been flooding America not only in the past but also today, because ignorance is not always